


brave soldier boy (come marching home)

by uptillthree



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Filipino Character, Filipino Lance, Gen, Present Tense, Team Voltron Family, genderfluid pidge but it's not explicitly mentioned, i couldn't not write filipino lance okay there was just. No Way, i just want a happy ending before S2 comes and wrecks me, the Sappiest Fic I've Ever Tried To Write, there's klance but only if you squint, voltron comes home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 12:35:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7892518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uptillthree/pseuds/uptillthree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The midnight Voltron returns to earth, the world is dark and dry and silent.</p>
<p>The paladins tumbled out of their lions, victorious and crying, clasping onto anything they can: the soil, the air, each other. It's too much; Lance can do little but stand stock still, his heart is thumping harder than any battle, and he thinks, Home. I'm home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	brave soldier boy (come marching home)

**Author's Note:**

> the title, of course, is taken from Avatar: The Last Airbender. let me live, guys. i just wanna bring these kids home. give 'em the cheesy happy ending they deserve. u know the drill.

The midnight Voltron returns to earth, the world is dark and dry and silent.

The paladins tumbled out of their lions, victorious and crying, clasping onto anything they can: the soil, the air, each other. It's too much, and Lance can do little but stand stock still, his heart is thumping harder than any battle.

He looks behind him and everyone is alive and there, and Keith is grinning wide enough to split his face open. Hunk lies on the ground as if any other planet's soil had never held him up so well. (Lance thinks this is understandable.) Pidge is hugging a tree, their brother whooping for joy, their father clinging to them; Shiro is heaving deep breaths, one after the other—good, controlled breaths, like the air is better here than any other planet—and Lance knows how that feels, too.

Lance watches a smile build on Shiro's face, and everything that follows is easy somehow. _Home,_ Lance thinks. _Home._

* * *

The first few days back are the strangest. After the night comes and the press leaves, after their families have reunited, after both the tears and the laughter¬—after the universe is saved—it’s still strange, and Lance doesn't think it will stop feeling that way for a long time.

One of the strange—but probably not that surprising—things is how they stay together, him and the rest of Voltron. They keep their phones on them at all times—Pidge made a group chat for them the moment they got home, and now Lance never lacks for messages from the team. His team, as he has come to call them. Often, however, one of them is always with another, if not the entire team; Shiro and Pidge and Hunk and Keith and him. Lance. Altogether.

Somehow a routine settles like this, easy and comfortable: if Lance is not at home, he is with Voltron. If he is not with Voltron, he is at home. It is the same with the rest of them. The world clamors for them, urges them to pursue their studies, further the research on outer space and everything that entails—but no. In another time that might be everything Lance had wanted, but now—no. There are more important things. This is the one thing he has learned, and probably the one thing Voltron can all agree on. They have done enough, and they owe the world nothing. There are more important things.

So most days, Lance busies himself with not being busy. Not that he's totally idle—Pidge engages him with their little projects sometimes, and he's looking for a semi-normal job, for his parents if nothing else. He still wants to be a pilot (a normal pilot, not a defender-of-the universe-pilot).

This is another strange thing—how he never seems to be doing enough—how after months, years on another planet, in a different universe with his life always on the line, daily… it feels strange, like there is such a thing as _too_ safe. Like a thousand years of jetlag, and he’s never going to get used to this old-new life, he’s never going to catch up to what used to be his normal.

He doesn’t quite know where he belongs now. (He knows he belonged in Voltron, but now what. Now what.)

That is, Lance corrects himself, he doesn’t know where he belongs apart from his house and his teammates’ respective houses, particularly Shiro’s flat, which, in all honesty, Lance has decided as the safest place to be. (Apparently everyone agrees on this, because when Lance steps into Shiro’s flat one weekend to visit he is already the fourth one there. This is not the first time.)

When Shiro comes home from work, his voice is trying to be long-suffering but sounds much too fond. “Why are you all here?”

Pidge shrugs. Doesn’t even look up from their phone. _Routine._ “Why not? Welcome home.”

“You’re the one who gave us spare keys to your house,” Keith adds.

Lance grins into his throw pillow on the couch, which is, by now, his regular spot.

Hunk nods vigorously. “Your flat is super nice, Shiro.”

“And you brought food for us, Shiro!” Lance leaps up and takes Shiro’s paper bag and raises it up—it’s still warm, and even though Shiro pretends that he doesn't expect them to come, somehow there's always enough food for everyone.

Lance’s grin widens, and when he looks back at them, everyone, including Shiro, is beaming with him.

* * *

All of their family understands, thankfully. Lance comes home to hugs and tears and footsteps pounding on the stairs in the middle of the night, everyone coming wake, even the little ones, whispers and shouts of “ _you’re home, you’re home, you’re home_.”

His mother breaks down at the sight of him, (as did Lance himself, as did his brothers, his sisters, his entire family, which, for the first time in a long time, was whole again that night) but the tears do not last till dawn.

When morning breaks, his mother cooks him a feast. A kiss on his cheek. His stomach growling. The smell of food in front of him—spiced and sharp and fresh and something else Lance has never been able to name. Has his mother's smile always been so kind? " _Kain na tayo, iho_."

And somehow Lance's eyes are burning again with tears—he tells himself it's just the heat of the meal getting in his eyes.

* * *

Lance still fears, sometimes, that it is all a dream. What if he wakes up one day and finds himself far from home? What if Blue is broken, what if Voltron is split apart again, what if another species tries to take the universe, what if the paladins are needed again—

“You look terrified,” Keith mutters beside him, and Lance startles.

“What? I mean—no, I’m not!”

“You look it, though.” Keith shakes his head. “What are you thinking?”

Lance stretches, pushes those thoughts from his head. “Nothin’. Overthinking, more like. Not important, not important.”

“I overthink a lot,” Hunk volunteers from the couch. “Especially at night, when I’m trying to sleep!”

“It’s the middle of the day, though,” Lance grumbles. “And—and I can’t stop thinking about what if the universe is in danger again or something, and, and we have to go _again—”_ He stops talking, because the room has thickened with tension with every word and it is his fault.

But Pidge is nodding hard, and they say, in all the quiet: “I worry about that too. And Matt, and my dad, and—I don’t want mom to be alone again, not—”

“Stop,” Keith hisses, and Lance doesn’t know why he’s whispering but he doesn’t question it. “That won’t happen, Pidge.”

“I know it won’t!” Pidge whispers back furiously. “I _know,_ but I just keep worrying—it’s so _annoying—”_

Lance nudges Keith with a smirk, the dark mood lifting slowly, but lifting. “Don’t you ever think like that?”

Keith turns red. “I do, but—I don’t know, you have to tell yourself it’s not true or something—you can’t believe it.”

Pidge looks at everyone else, unimpressed. “Does that work?”

“I don’t know how to explain it!” Keith rushes to say, “You just—it’s hard and it takes so much time, and, I don’t know—but you just, wait for that to pass. And you can’t get consumed by those thoughts.”

Which, Lance thought, leaning back on the couch again, as far as Keith’s advice generally went, were pretty good words to live by.

* * *

It’s not anything different, really—most people would find that strange, how they seem to cling to each other, like magnets, like planets whose orbits never stray too far, but it’s not wrong (Lance will fight anyone who even implies this).

It’s just—natural. It’s just right. Voltron is as much of a family as any.

They don’t have to talk, though most times they do. Pidge rambles often, whether it’s about how much better things are at home or about some new tech. Shiro complains about work, surprisingly enough. Keith has probably talked more shit about the press than all of them. Hunk even tells them about his nightmares once or twice, in a scratchy sort of whisper, and they listen, rapt, silent but to share their own fears.

Sometimes someone will bring up Allura and Coran, lost in some universe light-years and light-years away, and Lance loses his breath for a moment. He wonders—worries—out loud if they might be okay, shifting from planet to planet still, the last people of a lost race. It seems too late to turn back to them in that moment, too far and too impossible; there are universes between them and the lady and her counsel. Lance feels like he has not said goodbye enough. Not wished them well enough.

“They will be.” Shiro’s reply is immediate, clipped and urgent, as if he can’t stand to believe anything less. “Allura is strong, and so’s Coran. The universe is big, and they can contact us anytime.”

And they do not mention it again.

* * *

Every once in a while Lance always finds himself thinking about how good it feels, getting used to Earth again. (Earth itself is safe compared to the rest of the universes. Earth is home.) This thought pops up everywhere: when he steps into town and he thinks, _I haven't seen so many people that are my species in years_ ; when his bare feet touches the grass, the soil, Earth's water; when he gets to eat human food again, when the scent drifts up his nostrils—it's everywhere. It's everywhere, and Lance loves it.

" _Huy, tulala ka na naman d'yan_."

Lance looks up as his sister plops down beside him. (She is so much taller now.) The sky darkens; it reminds Lance a little of a planet he's once been to, but different... "Thinking."

"Thinking what?"

Lance grins, shakes his head. " _Wala, wala._ " The clouds seem to gather, rising up—they move so slow here on Earth, and there's so many—and then there is a rumbling, and light—Lance jumps.

_"Sira,"_ his sister laughs so loudly it's more like a bellow, snuggling into Lance's shoulder. Lance huffs. "It's just thunder."

" _Oo na, oo na_. You got scared too."

"Did not!" The rain starts to pour, loud and fast and hard. A downpour.

Lance watches, unable to hear anything above the noise. " _Lakas nga pala ng ulan dito_..." He mutters, and the rain is so loud his sister probably doesn't hear. (He'd forgotten, the color of the rain, the smell, the way it pounded at the roofs, the windows, and he can't believe he's forgotten.) "It almost sounds like bullets."

His sister says nothing, or maybe he just doesn't hear.

Lance grins. "Wanna run?"

"Hm?"

"Run." Lance raises his eyebrows. "Out. In the rain."

" _Magagalit si Ma!_ "

"' _Di ah. Dali!_ "

Slowly, a smile. " _Tara_."

(And Lance falls back in love with the rain long before he feels it on his face.)

**Author's Note:**

> Translations:
> 
> "Kain na tayo, iho." - “Let us eat, son.” 
> 
> For the last part, I just added their entire conversation to make it easier:  
> “Hey, you’re staring at nothing again.”  
> "Thinking."  
> "Thinking what?"  
> “…Nothing, nothing.” 
> 
> “Idiot! It’s just thunder.”  
> “Yeah, yeah. You got scared too.”  
> “Did not!”  
> “…I forgot it rains so hard here… The rain almost sounds like bullets.”  
> “…”  
> “…Wanna run?”  
> “Hm?”  
> “Run. Out in the rain.”  
> “Ma will get mad!”  
> “No she won’t. C’mon!”  
> “…Let’s go.”


End file.
